Good morning boys and girls!
Who can tell me what’s coming up on this coming Wednesday night? That’s right, it’s Halloween!!
So who is getting dressed up and going our trick or treating? Have you got your costumes and your goody bags ready yet? Hey, if you want lots of goodies, come to my house. My mother has been stocking up for weeks, and if I don’t get rid of them on Halloween, both of us will be into them, and that’s something we don’t need!
One thing you will need that night is a light so you can see where you’re going. If you can’t see where you’re going, you could get hurt, but you will also know what it is like to be blind. There another kind of light that we need so we can see where we’re going in life, and so that we won’t be spiritually blind. That is the light that Jesus gives us.
The light of Jesus gives us light and hope, just like Jesus gave sight and spiritual light to a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. Let me read you the story. It is from Mark 10:46-52.
Boys and girls, we just heard Jesus make a promise to Bartimaeus and then keep it. Have you ever made promises to people and not kept them? The story I’m going to tell you shows us how important it is that God keeps his promises, especially about letting us see the good things in life. The story is about a girl named Flavia. Flavia was in the fourth grade. She saw an advertisement on television that the Ice Capades would be coming to town. She told her mother that she wanted to go. Her mother said she and her father would talk about it. That night before Flavia went to bed her father told her that when the Ice Capades came they would take her. She forgot about it until later in the week when she saw the ad on TV again. She ran in to where her parents were to find out if they were going. “We already have the tickets,” her mother said. "We promised we would take you, and we are going to keep our promise." And they did.
After that, Flavia came home from school excited because her class had visited the zoo. She told her parents that she wanted them to go to the zoo with her so that she could show them all the animals she had seen. They said they would take her to the zoo on Sunday afternoon, not this week, but next week. Flavia had forgotten all about it when her father said on the way to church, “This afternoon, we are going to the zoo.” He remembered the promise he had made to her. It made Flavia very happy to think her father remembered his promise.
Another time Flavia was teasing her little brother as he played with blocks in the den. As soon as he would stack them up, she would knock them down. Her mother told her that if she didn’t stop, she would have to go to her room and stay there. She didn’t stop, and her mother marched her straight to her room and closed the door. Her mother kept her promise. How do you think Flavia felt about that?
That night, when they were getting ready to say prayers, Flavia said to her parents, “You are just like God.”
“What do you mean?” her father asked.
“Whatever you say will happen, happens,” she answered.
“No, Flavia, we are not as strong as God, but we have learned from God that it is important to make good promises and keep them.”
“I want to make a good promise," said Flavia, "I want to tell God what I’m going to do and do it.”
“That’s good,” said her mother. "What promise do you want to make?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Flavia said.
And so she did. Then they prayed a prayer like this: “Dear God, help us make good promises and keep them. Amen”
Let us close our eyes for a moment of prayer. Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to be the light of our world. Help us be shining lights of faith, and keep our promises so that our light will lead others to you. We ask this in the Name of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
